


The Rain It Raineth

by m_malpractice



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Clairvoyance, Corpses, F/M, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Inspired by The Umbrella Academy, Mind Palace, Talking To Dead People, holmescest but they dont do anything, mycroft controls everybody, mycroft's mind palace actually, sherrinford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29003811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_malpractice/pseuds/m_malpractice
Summary: Mycroft doesn't show up at Sherrinford for a few months, and Eurus comes up with a little game.(a part of Superpowers AU)
Relationships: Eurus Holmes/Mycroft Holmes
Kudos: 3





	The Rain It Raineth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heksejakt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heksejakt/gifts).



> the title came from Norman Garstin's painting  
> the epigraph is from "Mary" by Adrianne Lenker (seriously, "mom and dad and violins" screams HOLMES to me)

_oh and, heavens, when you looked at me_

_your eyes were like machinery_

_your hands were making artifacts in the corner of my mind_

He hasn’t been to Sherrinford for months.

_Her cell looks like a time capsule. There is no single superfluous item in it, only perfect markers of time and place. For Eurus they are a prison robe, an abandoned violin, and a comb. For him – a three-piece suit, a watch, and a switched-off phone. The smooth grayness of the walls allows them to focus on each other, as if nothing else exists except this cell._

_All things around them perform their own simple and clear functions. The comb is to keep the hair straight. Eurus says it helps her hear what's going on in other people's minds. For the same reason, she never uses hair bands – not anymore._

_The watch is to keep time going. One needs a trigger, an anchor, a shrill sound of an alarm to return from where there is no time at all. Of the three of them, Sherlock is the only one who always knows what time it is. The time is in his head, always accurate and precise._

_Eurus is the one who doesn't need time at all, but without it she can get too far away from the world._

_With every power comes its own weakness._

_They look into each other's eyes, and he presses a button on the smartwatch, setting an alarm._

Detective Inspector Lestrade opens a can of soda, and with a loud hiss, it bursts out, splashing on his coat.

"Fuck," he mutters under his breath.

When a black auto pulls up next to him, he still has wet sweet soda stains on his coat and shirt. Mycroft's gaze, blank, almost empty, passes over him indifferently.

"But I thought we were waiting for someone... "

"Less _significant_?"

"Yeah," Lestrade admits, giving him a suspicious look. "It doesn't look like this case is anything out of the ordinary. This woman…"

"Just show me the body," Mycroft says wearily. "Don't talk."

The soil of the waste ground is wet after the recent rain. Someone had been digging for a while, but gave up and left the body lying on the fresh and sweet-smelling soil. Mycroft inhales the scent for a moment, and studies the woman's face with an incomprehensible expression in his eyes.

"Stand back."

A couple of policemen step back uncertainly, glancing at Lestrade.

"Stand back and look away," Mycroft demands urgently. "Don't turn around until I tell you to. Get out your phones and check your email, if that makes it easier for you."

"Go, go, go," Lestrade claps his hands impatiently, genuinely interested in what Mycroft is going to do. Or rather, _how_ he is going to do it. "Hurry!"

"But we're not done with the evidence yet..."

"Go!" Lestrade shouts, and the police hurriedly move away, turning their backs to the crime scene. When Lestrade looks back at Mycroft, Holmes is taking off his shoes and socks.

"What are you... oh."

Mycroft's bare feet sink into the moist, soft, but uncomfortably cold ground. He winces and digs his toes deeper into the soil, lowering his eyelids as if listening to something. Then he squats down next to the body, resting his open hand on the chest. In the slowly falling dusk, his face looks as bloodless as the face of the dead woman.

"Rise," he murmurs.

Nothing happens for a few long moments, and then the woman sits up in a quick, sharp movement and freezes again. Her eyes are wide and dead, staring straight at Lestrade.

"Holy fuck!.. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Holmes, I just... I know this is the kind of _thing_ you do. I just didn't expect that..."

He pauses, because Mycroft is silent, too. Now his hand doesn't touch the dead body that is still sitting and staring at nothing. Lestrade moves away to avoid that gaze, so he doesn't see Mycroft's lips move as he leans in and whispers something in the woman's ear. After a moment, she turns her head and opens her mouth with the same blank expression, her lips almost touching Mycroft's ear.

Lestrade puts a fist to his mouth. Personally, he wouldn't have leaned so close to a corpse, but the Holmes brothers have their own methods.

Mycroft listens very carefully and quietly, and then, with a single movement of his hand, pushes the body back to the ground.

"And that's... that's it?" Lestrade hurries over to him and holds out his hand, which Mycroft accepts after some hesitation. "She won't get up and walk around? You didn't tell her anything..."

Mycroft stands in front of him, still holding his hand, and Lestrade realizes that it's his left hand, the one that touched the corpse, and he feels sick to his stomach, even though he's been working for the police for decades and has seen far more sickening things. Mycroft's pale feet are still half-buried in the soft, moist soil, and Lestrade somehow feels as if he's holding not fingers but soft pale worms.

"Talking to them," Mycroft smiles faintly, "isn't always necessary. Oh, and the smell of spilled soda on your clothes is too sweet. It kept me from concentrating."

_He can feel her sitting across from him, but at the same time she's not there. Her presence doesn't interfere with what's slowly unfolding in his mind. She says that each time it happens differently: to get into someone's head, you need to open a door, or knock down a heavy padlock, or break through a wall or a stream of water. But his mind palace is a huge Chinese puzzle with a hundred entrances and exits, and everything there is upside down or bizarrely twisted._

_He knows how to glide through these endless corridors and up the twisted stairs, past huge stacks of files arranged in a certain way, and crooked mirrors (in this one he is ugly, and in this one he is beautiful)._

_There are so many things stored here, things dead and things living._

_It must feel nauseating to an outsider; it’s like a huge mincing machine of walls, stairs, doorways, and holes in the floor. It must feel horrendous if you get in without permission: the sickening endless vibration of the working mechanism, the dizzying turns of the connecting parts and internal surfaces – and the dark creatures lurking in the depths of the machine._

_But today he opens those twisted doors for Eurus, straightens out the curved walls of the maze and the floors of the corridors, the twisted stairs and crooked mirrors, and the monsters break free and run towards her like dogs greeting an old friend._

Sherlock browses through the time intervals as if turning the pages of a book.

"Six bodies, all women, dark hair, medium height. Murdered, but there is no signs of violence or fight. Drugged, probably. What the forensics says?"

"The results…"

"Well, no drugs, then. John? Remember that case about the thin needle and the twins?"

John looks out of the kitchen.

"Um, yeah. End of…"

"Right, March, last year, thank you, John. Interesting, but not _too_ interesting. Come on, Greg, remember what I taught you. You can handle it on your own."

"To be honest, Sherlock, we don't have any leads at all right now. But I'm much more concerned that your brother is interested in the case."

This takes Sherlock by surprise.

"What does he want from you? Oh, wait, don’t open your mouth, I get it, he didn't explain anything, just showed up at the crime scene and started sniffing around."

"That's what I don't like. Is this a government matter? None of the victims were associated with the government or with politics in general, so…"

Sherlock joins his fingers thoughtfully under his chin. Well, _now_ he's curious.

_"Why are you such a horrible bore?"_

_There's something strange in her voice, and as he listens, he realizes it's sadness. She still looks like a little girl that no one wants to talk to, not because they don't like her, but because they already have someone to be friends with. Mycroft knows that she had never been really interested in him. When they were kids, they had too much of an age difference. It felt so significant back then. She must have thought that adults didn't understand how to play her little games, and hoped that Sherlock would be the one to join her._

_This was the moment when Eurus Holmes, a genius, miscalculated._

_Sherlock was never the one._

_"Oh, please," Mycroft says. "Uncle Rudy was definitely right about you. You'll have to correct all the mistakes you've made, no matter how many."_

_"But it's no fun at all!" she moans. "Why can't we just tell him everything this time? So that there are three of us again? Two brothers and a sister! I miss him. He was so much fun..."_

_"You were the only one having fun," he shakes his head. "Enough, Eurus. Do as I say.”_

_And she does her mind trick, over and over again._

A young lab assistant with dark curly hair makes eyes at him. Surprisingly, he encounters this sort of thing quite regularly. The atmosphere of power and money is to blame. And a three-piece suit, of course.

No one can feel the putrid smell. No one hears the whispers in the old morgue.

"Can I help you somehow? Or should I leave? I can get you, uh, а coffee..."

The boy has no idea who he's talking to. He has a lively face, which reflects even the briefest emotions.

The face of the corpse on the table, on the contrary, is so white and motionless. Mycroft would have liked it if it didn't resemble _her_ face so much. Everything about this face reminds him of Eurus – her lips, her hair, her cheekbones. He knows it was done deliberately to make him angry, but the knowledge doesn't make it any easier. He wants to rip this face off the skull and see if there's another one underneath, a real one.

Mycroft gently lifts the corpse's eyelid with one finger. No. At least the eyes are completely wrong.

He almost hates her right now. Away from Eurus, absolutely everything reminds him of her, and the longer he doesn't come back, the stronger the feeling that something is missing. Ordinary people call it loneliness. He feels lonely. The words "Coffee, yes, why not" form in his throat, but they never leave his tongue. It’s raining outside, and he needs to be somewhere in a half of an hour.

"No," he says slowly. "You can't help me."

***

Sherlock solves the case.

He finds the executors and coordinators, tells the police why the bodies were abandoned and not hidden. He explains that the killers acted according to a plan from above. And he's almost right about everything he says, but one piece of the puzzle is still missing. In fact, the answer is very simple. Eurus wants them both in Sherrinford, and she's very, very diligent about it.

"What have you done?" Sherlock asks, inspecting the dead, but still standing guards with a close look. "Our poor parents... They wanted to raise geniuses, and we grew up to be psychopaths."

He has never seen before what Mycroft is _really_ capable of, and now he has this strange expression on his face. Mycroft goes mentally through the variety of human emotions and stops at the word "fear".

"I've done the only right thing."

The entire Sherrinford staff is now dead, because this way she can’t get into their minds. She can’t control them, and make them do what she wants. The only person whose mind she can read right now is Sherlock, and Mycroft lets him into her cell.

"Make him forget," he says, "and everything will be the same again. Just you and me, as always."

She’s right, he’s such a bore.

Mycroft goes outside and watches the rain fall.


End file.
